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Flashlight Enthusiast
THE TITANIUM FLASHLIGHT REMINTIFICATION PROJECT
So this whole project (if you will allow me to use such a grandiose term for such a minor endeavor) started out with me trolling the titanium custom and mod b/s/t listings here on CPF where I ran across Joseph Milton's LunaSol 20 sales thread. I looked at the pictures of that light and I was like "Holy #***%! That light is about the most beat up titanium light I have ever seen for sale! Talk about a beater!"
and then the very next thought was pretty much--fully formed--the idea for this project.
See, for years I've touted the advantages of titanium flashlights, and in particular the advantage that titanium is one thing, through and through, and thus has no surface layer of anodizing or plating to flake off or damage, and can therefore be refinished and repaired without the kind of difficulty necessary to refinish an anodized or plated light (e.g. entirely stripping off the anodizing, smoothing, and then re-anodizing or re-coating.) In the process of touting the advantages of titanium, I always referenced an instance where a CPFer severely damaged his Ti-PD-S in a motorcycle accident, and amazingly another forum member was able to file and sand and buff and polish the light back into beautiful shape. The before and after pictures are quite dramatic! And they exemplify this particular advantage of titanium with a bold exclamation point. But, the thing is that while it certainly did look good, it no longer looked mint. It was a lot more shiny and smooth than before. There were no lathe marks to be seen. A lot of edges were rounded. Definitely way, way better than it had been right after the accident, of course. But not as good as when it was mint.
So, when I saw Joseph Milton's beat up LunaSol 20, it got me thinking. Here was a light that just had a lot of daily wear and tear: scratches, small dents, scuffs, etc.--the stuff that happens when you really EDC your light as a tool for months and months or even years. It gets fairly scratched up. Most of the time, for most of us, even in this case, the patina of scratches and scuffs and other marks really add up to, well, a patina. A sort of finish all its own, and one you have to earn. So it's kind of cool. And most of the time, for most of us, this patina still looks quite good. That's the thing about titanium lights. They just look good in most any condition. Granted, in certain harsh, bright, direct lighting, the scratches really stand out, and the light looks a lot worse, but in most cases, the scratches just kind of meld into a patina. It's nice. And it contrasts dramatically with how an anodized aluminum light looks after such use! A scratched up HA light just looks bad. No way around it. Titanium still looks good with lots of small scratches and marks. However, there's no getting around the fact that it's no longer mint, and just doesn't look as good as when you first got it from Don. And to me, that is the ideal: that mint condition look and feel. There's nothing else like it. I don't want to buff my light to the point of chrome-y shiny-ness! Absolutely not. What I want--and what I suspect many of us want--is to be able to return our lights to mint condition. And that is the goal that I set myself here: to find a simple and easy method for returning a titanium light with normal EDC wear and tear to mint condition look and feel. I will tell you straight away that it was not achieved. It is not possible. Or not by the vast majority of us, anyway. But, it is the goal, the ideal, the benchmark for this project. And despite the fact that the goal was not achieved, I suspect that you will be interested to see just how close I came to reaching this goal.
I wanted to develop a method which first did no harm--and which was very unlikely to do harm, even by someone with little or no experience in machining or metal polishing, etc. And which, second, had as its goal to bring a light back closer to the way that it looked and felt when it was new. I also wanted to develop a method which needed no special tools, nothing rare or expensive or hard to get. I wanted to use only readily available tools and materials that the average CPF'er could easily and cheaply buy or which they probably already owned.
Here too, I failed. Because in order to use this method to repair and restore the finish of your titanium flashlight, you will need to remove the clip. As many of you already know, on McGizmo titanium flashlights this requires a special tool. The hex screws nominally take a 1/16" hex driver or wrench. However, the standard 1/16" hex tip is too loose and you will not be able to remove the screws and you will damage the hex shape in the process. So, you must beg, borrow, steal, or buy an MIP Thorp 1/16" Hex Driver Wrench. This is something which anyone who owns a McGizmo flashlight would do well to possess and at $14.50 it isn't going to be a deal breaker for most people. But there it is. That is the one specialty tool you will need for this method.
Other than that, however, all you will need is 400 and 600 grit sandpaper--but not the kind meant for wood--no "garnet" paper. If it's not light tan or brown colored, it's almost certainly fine. I used Norton Blue-Bak Waterproof sandpaper and it worked great, but any black 400 and 600 grit sandpapers available at your local hardware or big box home improvement store will do just fine. You will also need a razor blade or utility knife and a metal ruler. These are needed to cut the sandpaper into nice neat strips of various uniform widths.
Oh, and one more thing. The piece de resistance of this method is the final step of a nail shaping, buffing, and shining salon set. Usually this is a block with 4 usable sides of progressively finer surfaces, but sometimes it is a set of three separate boards (this is what I have) or sometimes it is some other shape and can have fewer or greater than 4 grades or surfaces. Two that I know of, which are readily available on Amazon are:
Tweezerman Shape and Shine Nail Tool
Revlon CrazyShine Nail Buffer
Also, at Target, there are two choices. The Trim 7-way buffer, and the Trim buffing block (which has four steps or grades). And for reference, also pictured below is my set of three separate boards:
These tools are used by women (and some men) (and all manicurists) to shape, smooth, and then buff and shine nails. I know it sounds a little crazy to suggest that something which is designed to shine nails will do anything at all to titanium, and honestly I had no expectations that it would work, but I was trying everything, and, well, work it did! In my experience so far, the final step of this nail shining tool or set is just about perfect for putting the final touch to the surface of your titanium flashlight! Crazy, but there it is. I tried lots of different grades of sandpaper and various methods and steps, and 400 grit, then 600 grit sandpaper followed by the shine surface of a nail buffing set creates the best results I have found so far! The nail buffer step is more for the feel of the surface than for the look, but it also brings back just the right amount of shine.
I did a lot of experimentation on a block of titanium. It's tooling marks were far deeper than what would be likely for an EDC scratch, but I didn't want to experiment on someone's precious McGizmo! I took the left side of the top of this Ti block all the way from 240 to 600 grit plus the buffing/shine final step of the nail polish board. I didn't get the deep scratches completely out. But for the record I wasn't trying to do this. I could have if I had started with a courser grit than 240, or if I had spent longer working the 240 and 320 grits, but I only worked until I got out the size tool marks that were about what EDC scratches would be. Here are a couple pics with the worked side on the left, and unworked side on the right:
Once I had the method down, I moved onto working on Joseph Milton's light. Except it wasn't his LS20. Someone bought that before I had a chance to PM Joseph with my idea and my proposal. He hadn't updated his sales thread yet, but when I messaged him, the light was, in fact, already sold. However, he fortunately had a LunaSol 27 which was just as beat up and which he would be happy to lend to me to see what I could do with it. I was thrilled. I had always wanted to see a LunaSol 27 in person, and here was my chance. And, true to his word, the LS27 was every bit as beat up as the LS20. Let's take a look!
BEFORE
THE METHOD
OK. So, the first thing I did was take the light apart and give it a thorough cleaning and lubing with Krytox 50/50. I also replaced the piston and head o-rings (but not the window o-ring), and lightly sanded the contact end of the kilroy spring with fine grit sandpaper. I then reassembled the light, but left the clip off. I did this because I did not want any of the sanding residue or grit to find its way inside the flashlight, and so I relied on the integrity of the o-ring seals to prevent this. That, and, well, there's very little residue anyway, and most of it I just blew off as I went, so it probably would have been fine anyway. But I didn't want to take any chances, and neither should you. So I recommend working on a fully assembled light. Plus, this will also protect the kilroy spring from getting damaged or bent.
Next, I started in on the body of the light. I cut the 400 grit sandpaper into the appropriate width for the section of light that I was working on. Just put a metal ruler along one edge of the sandpaper, at the desired inset to give you the width you want. Then hold firmly and draw a utility knife or razor blade along the ruler to cut off a nice uniform width of sandpaper. Here you can see a sequence of shots of a very narrow strip for the recessed rings towards the tail at the grip section being pulled down to sand inside these rings:
And here a super-wide strip for the raised rings in that same section--faster to do them all at once:
You don't need a lot of pressure (and the narrow strips will break if you apply too much), and it's best to take your time, especially at first. Get a feel for how much of an effect you are having. Get a feel for pulling the strip around the body of the light, and how much to rotate between pulls to guarantee good coverage. Work under a bright light so you can see the progress and results. You can use the rounded-arc section geometry to guarantee that pressure is applied and abrasion happens, or you can use your finger pad to push down on the section where you want the sanding to happen. This is especially useful for bad scuffs and dents that you want to give a little extra attention to. And also at the head or inside the back of the tail section.
Certain beveled edges are going to present a lot of difficulty. It's very much like the difficulty of keeping an even bevel on a knife edge which is being sharpening by hand. My only advice is to work slowly and carefully and always err on the side of doing less. The 400 and 600 grits used here will take some time to do any significant rounding to an edge, but they will eventually do some unwanted rounding. So, be careful and work slowly. I put the light tail down on the full sheet of sandpaper on a flat surface at the approximate angle (45 degrees or so), then by feel and by eye made sure that the bevel of the light was flat against the sandpaper surface, then rotated the light slowly while keeping the angle correct by eye. Then repeat. Slow and time consuming, but useful in helping not to just sand the edges. And despite all this, sand the edges a bit I did. However, because it was 400 grit paper, there was no harm done.
The very back of the tail can be done the same way but it's so much easier as you can just stand the light on its tail and slowly rotate it on the sandpaper sheet. Just make sure that the sandpaper is on a flat surface, of course. And constantly check your progress. And resist the urge to push down too hard.
And do NOT try to sand the piston nub! You will only scuff up the tritium vial! And you do NOT want to do that. Plus, that nub is recessed inside the tail flare of the body of the light and so doesn't get scratched much anyway. Leave it well alone!
Also resist the urge to try to sand the tear-drops on the head. Again they don't get scratched up anyway, and they would be devilishly difficult to sand, I think.
And finally, I would say the same goes for the inside bevel at the head of the light, where the retaining o-ring lives. Just leave it alone. You'll only scuff the o-ring or scratch the lens. And this bevel is also just plain hard to scratch, so it likely already looks about as good as the rest of the light will look when you finish with it.
Always work with the "grain" of the light--i.e. radially along the cylinder, with the lathe marks.
I would say to work more with the 400 grit than the 600 grit, but that's personal preference. In fact, for Joseph Milton's LS27 shown here, I didn't use 600 grit at all because I wanted a bit more grippy-ness and because it helped hide the scratches a bit better.
Now, the nail buffer is used for feel more than for looks. Go to town on this thing, if you want. You can't do any harm with it. Buff away, then run your finger over the area. Do this until you like what you feel. It takes the edges off the sandpaper marks and also adds a bit of shine. If you do too much, just hit the area again with the 600 grit sandpaper and start again.
All in all, start to finish, including the cleaning and lubing, I spent about 6 hours on Joseph's LunaSol. (I also felt that his clip really needed to be replaced, and so what you see here is a brand new clip, along with the refinished light.) And here is the result:
AFTER
FINAL WORDS
So, what can I say? Titanium is freaking awesome! I was super pleased with how Joseph's light came out. Certainly it's not perfect. Certainly there are some marks left. But also just as certainly it looks a heck of a lot better than it did before. (And keep in mind that these pictures are in direct sunlight--the least flattering light with which to photograph a titanium flashlight.) With a minimum of time and effort and tools and technique I was able to greatly improve the look and feel of his light. Personally, the way I use my lights and carry them means that I will probably never have to do this to one of my own McGizmo's, but it's really nice to know that if I did end up needing to touch up the finish of my lights, I now know how to do so. And so do you! It really works like a charm!
Please let me know if you have questions, comments, suggestions, etc. I'm happy to update this first post with additional tips and techniques and methods, or different (and better) ones. I know for a fact that I am not the only person to touch up the finish of a titanium flashlight. So, any thoughts and comments are welcome! Thanks for reading!
So this whole project (if you will allow me to use such a grandiose term for such a minor endeavor) started out with me trolling the titanium custom and mod b/s/t listings here on CPF where I ran across Joseph Milton's LunaSol 20 sales thread. I looked at the pictures of that light and I was like "Holy #***%! That light is about the most beat up titanium light I have ever seen for sale! Talk about a beater!"
and then the very next thought was pretty much--fully formed--the idea for this project.
See, for years I've touted the advantages of titanium flashlights, and in particular the advantage that titanium is one thing, through and through, and thus has no surface layer of anodizing or plating to flake off or damage, and can therefore be refinished and repaired without the kind of difficulty necessary to refinish an anodized or plated light (e.g. entirely stripping off the anodizing, smoothing, and then re-anodizing or re-coating.) In the process of touting the advantages of titanium, I always referenced an instance where a CPFer severely damaged his Ti-PD-S in a motorcycle accident, and amazingly another forum member was able to file and sand and buff and polish the light back into beautiful shape. The before and after pictures are quite dramatic! And they exemplify this particular advantage of titanium with a bold exclamation point. But, the thing is that while it certainly did look good, it no longer looked mint. It was a lot more shiny and smooth than before. There were no lathe marks to be seen. A lot of edges were rounded. Definitely way, way better than it had been right after the accident, of course. But not as good as when it was mint.
So, when I saw Joseph Milton's beat up LunaSol 20, it got me thinking. Here was a light that just had a lot of daily wear and tear: scratches, small dents, scuffs, etc.--the stuff that happens when you really EDC your light as a tool for months and months or even years. It gets fairly scratched up. Most of the time, for most of us, even in this case, the patina of scratches and scuffs and other marks really add up to, well, a patina. A sort of finish all its own, and one you have to earn. So it's kind of cool. And most of the time, for most of us, this patina still looks quite good. That's the thing about titanium lights. They just look good in most any condition. Granted, in certain harsh, bright, direct lighting, the scratches really stand out, and the light looks a lot worse, but in most cases, the scratches just kind of meld into a patina. It's nice. And it contrasts dramatically with how an anodized aluminum light looks after such use! A scratched up HA light just looks bad. No way around it. Titanium still looks good with lots of small scratches and marks. However, there's no getting around the fact that it's no longer mint, and just doesn't look as good as when you first got it from Don. And to me, that is the ideal: that mint condition look and feel. There's nothing else like it. I don't want to buff my light to the point of chrome-y shiny-ness! Absolutely not. What I want--and what I suspect many of us want--is to be able to return our lights to mint condition. And that is the goal that I set myself here: to find a simple and easy method for returning a titanium light with normal EDC wear and tear to mint condition look and feel. I will tell you straight away that it was not achieved. It is not possible. Or not by the vast majority of us, anyway. But, it is the goal, the ideal, the benchmark for this project. And despite the fact that the goal was not achieved, I suspect that you will be interested to see just how close I came to reaching this goal.
I wanted to develop a method which first did no harm--and which was very unlikely to do harm, even by someone with little or no experience in machining or metal polishing, etc. And which, second, had as its goal to bring a light back closer to the way that it looked and felt when it was new. I also wanted to develop a method which needed no special tools, nothing rare or expensive or hard to get. I wanted to use only readily available tools and materials that the average CPF'er could easily and cheaply buy or which they probably already owned.
Here too, I failed. Because in order to use this method to repair and restore the finish of your titanium flashlight, you will need to remove the clip. As many of you already know, on McGizmo titanium flashlights this requires a special tool. The hex screws nominally take a 1/16" hex driver or wrench. However, the standard 1/16" hex tip is too loose and you will not be able to remove the screws and you will damage the hex shape in the process. So, you must beg, borrow, steal, or buy an MIP Thorp 1/16" Hex Driver Wrench. This is something which anyone who owns a McGizmo flashlight would do well to possess and at $14.50 it isn't going to be a deal breaker for most people. But there it is. That is the one specialty tool you will need for this method.
Other than that, however, all you will need is 400 and 600 grit sandpaper--but not the kind meant for wood--no "garnet" paper. If it's not light tan or brown colored, it's almost certainly fine. I used Norton Blue-Bak Waterproof sandpaper and it worked great, but any black 400 and 600 grit sandpapers available at your local hardware or big box home improvement store will do just fine. You will also need a razor blade or utility knife and a metal ruler. These are needed to cut the sandpaper into nice neat strips of various uniform widths.
Oh, and one more thing. The piece de resistance of this method is the final step of a nail shaping, buffing, and shining salon set. Usually this is a block with 4 usable sides of progressively finer surfaces, but sometimes it is a set of three separate boards (this is what I have) or sometimes it is some other shape and can have fewer or greater than 4 grades or surfaces. Two that I know of, which are readily available on Amazon are:
Tweezerman Shape and Shine Nail Tool
Revlon CrazyShine Nail Buffer
Also, at Target, there are two choices. The Trim 7-way buffer, and the Trim buffing block (which has four steps or grades). And for reference, also pictured below is my set of three separate boards:
These tools are used by women (and some men) (and all manicurists) to shape, smooth, and then buff and shine nails. I know it sounds a little crazy to suggest that something which is designed to shine nails will do anything at all to titanium, and honestly I had no expectations that it would work, but I was trying everything, and, well, work it did! In my experience so far, the final step of this nail shining tool or set is just about perfect for putting the final touch to the surface of your titanium flashlight! Crazy, but there it is. I tried lots of different grades of sandpaper and various methods and steps, and 400 grit, then 600 grit sandpaper followed by the shine surface of a nail buffing set creates the best results I have found so far! The nail buffer step is more for the feel of the surface than for the look, but it also brings back just the right amount of shine.
I did a lot of experimentation on a block of titanium. It's tooling marks were far deeper than what would be likely for an EDC scratch, but I didn't want to experiment on someone's precious McGizmo! I took the left side of the top of this Ti block all the way from 240 to 600 grit plus the buffing/shine final step of the nail polish board. I didn't get the deep scratches completely out. But for the record I wasn't trying to do this. I could have if I had started with a courser grit than 240, or if I had spent longer working the 240 and 320 grits, but I only worked until I got out the size tool marks that were about what EDC scratches would be. Here are a couple pics with the worked side on the left, and unworked side on the right:
Once I had the method down, I moved onto working on Joseph Milton's light. Except it wasn't his LS20. Someone bought that before I had a chance to PM Joseph with my idea and my proposal. He hadn't updated his sales thread yet, but when I messaged him, the light was, in fact, already sold. However, he fortunately had a LunaSol 27 which was just as beat up and which he would be happy to lend to me to see what I could do with it. I was thrilled. I had always wanted to see a LunaSol 27 in person, and here was my chance. And, true to his word, the LS27 was every bit as beat up as the LS20. Let's take a look!
BEFORE
THE METHOD
OK. So, the first thing I did was take the light apart and give it a thorough cleaning and lubing with Krytox 50/50. I also replaced the piston and head o-rings (but not the window o-ring), and lightly sanded the contact end of the kilroy spring with fine grit sandpaper. I then reassembled the light, but left the clip off. I did this because I did not want any of the sanding residue or grit to find its way inside the flashlight, and so I relied on the integrity of the o-ring seals to prevent this. That, and, well, there's very little residue anyway, and most of it I just blew off as I went, so it probably would have been fine anyway. But I didn't want to take any chances, and neither should you. So I recommend working on a fully assembled light. Plus, this will also protect the kilroy spring from getting damaged or bent.
Next, I started in on the body of the light. I cut the 400 grit sandpaper into the appropriate width for the section of light that I was working on. Just put a metal ruler along one edge of the sandpaper, at the desired inset to give you the width you want. Then hold firmly and draw a utility knife or razor blade along the ruler to cut off a nice uniform width of sandpaper. Here you can see a sequence of shots of a very narrow strip for the recessed rings towards the tail at the grip section being pulled down to sand inside these rings:
And here a super-wide strip for the raised rings in that same section--faster to do them all at once:
You don't need a lot of pressure (and the narrow strips will break if you apply too much), and it's best to take your time, especially at first. Get a feel for how much of an effect you are having. Get a feel for pulling the strip around the body of the light, and how much to rotate between pulls to guarantee good coverage. Work under a bright light so you can see the progress and results. You can use the rounded-arc section geometry to guarantee that pressure is applied and abrasion happens, or you can use your finger pad to push down on the section where you want the sanding to happen. This is especially useful for bad scuffs and dents that you want to give a little extra attention to. And also at the head or inside the back of the tail section.
Certain beveled edges are going to present a lot of difficulty. It's very much like the difficulty of keeping an even bevel on a knife edge which is being sharpening by hand. My only advice is to work slowly and carefully and always err on the side of doing less. The 400 and 600 grits used here will take some time to do any significant rounding to an edge, but they will eventually do some unwanted rounding. So, be careful and work slowly. I put the light tail down on the full sheet of sandpaper on a flat surface at the approximate angle (45 degrees or so), then by feel and by eye made sure that the bevel of the light was flat against the sandpaper surface, then rotated the light slowly while keeping the angle correct by eye. Then repeat. Slow and time consuming, but useful in helping not to just sand the edges. And despite all this, sand the edges a bit I did. However, because it was 400 grit paper, there was no harm done.
The very back of the tail can be done the same way but it's so much easier as you can just stand the light on its tail and slowly rotate it on the sandpaper sheet. Just make sure that the sandpaper is on a flat surface, of course. And constantly check your progress. And resist the urge to push down too hard.
And do NOT try to sand the piston nub! You will only scuff up the tritium vial! And you do NOT want to do that. Plus, that nub is recessed inside the tail flare of the body of the light and so doesn't get scratched much anyway. Leave it well alone!
Also resist the urge to try to sand the tear-drops on the head. Again they don't get scratched up anyway, and they would be devilishly difficult to sand, I think.
And finally, I would say the same goes for the inside bevel at the head of the light, where the retaining o-ring lives. Just leave it alone. You'll only scuff the o-ring or scratch the lens. And this bevel is also just plain hard to scratch, so it likely already looks about as good as the rest of the light will look when you finish with it.
Always work with the "grain" of the light--i.e. radially along the cylinder, with the lathe marks.
I would say to work more with the 400 grit than the 600 grit, but that's personal preference. In fact, for Joseph Milton's LS27 shown here, I didn't use 600 grit at all because I wanted a bit more grippy-ness and because it helped hide the scratches a bit better.
Now, the nail buffer is used for feel more than for looks. Go to town on this thing, if you want. You can't do any harm with it. Buff away, then run your finger over the area. Do this until you like what you feel. It takes the edges off the sandpaper marks and also adds a bit of shine. If you do too much, just hit the area again with the 600 grit sandpaper and start again.
All in all, start to finish, including the cleaning and lubing, I spent about 6 hours on Joseph's LunaSol. (I also felt that his clip really needed to be replaced, and so what you see here is a brand new clip, along with the refinished light.) And here is the result:
AFTER
FINAL WORDS
So, what can I say? Titanium is freaking awesome! I was super pleased with how Joseph's light came out. Certainly it's not perfect. Certainly there are some marks left. But also just as certainly it looks a heck of a lot better than it did before. (And keep in mind that these pictures are in direct sunlight--the least flattering light with which to photograph a titanium flashlight.) With a minimum of time and effort and tools and technique I was able to greatly improve the look and feel of his light. Personally, the way I use my lights and carry them means that I will probably never have to do this to one of my own McGizmo's, but it's really nice to know that if I did end up needing to touch up the finish of my lights, I now know how to do so. And so do you! It really works like a charm!
Please let me know if you have questions, comments, suggestions, etc. I'm happy to update this first post with additional tips and techniques and methods, or different (and better) ones. I know for a fact that I am not the only person to touch up the finish of a titanium flashlight. So, any thoughts and comments are welcome! Thanks for reading!
